Fine... You Win - Professor Moffatt, it is.
Thursday May 1, 2008
I have spent most of my adult life in academia and my best friend has spent most of his life in the military. Our work environments have, I believe, only one thing in common - the obsession some of our co-workers have with rank.
Many academics are absolutely obsessed with rank - Who has tenure and who doesn't have tenure... Who has achieved the status of a full P (full professor, similar to a full bird Colonel) and who is stuck at associate professor.
I taught a course last term and due to my status at my school, my rank was Lecturer, which are the NCOs of the academic world. (My best friend, incidentally, is a real-life NCO). I did not want to ruffle any feathers by being referred to having a rank I have not yet obtained, so I went out of my way to make it clear to all that I was not a professor (full or otherwise).
My teaching contract had me listed as Assistant Professor. I let HR know that I had not yet attained that rank and that I would not sign my contract until it had my correct rank. They looked at me like I was nuts, but they altered the contract and I signed it.
Course outlines were sent out to my students that had my name listed as Professor Mike Moffatt. In the first day of class I made it clear to my students that they were not to refer to me as "Professor". I said if they wanted to give me a title I hadn't earned, I'd prefer Admiral. A number of students still called me Professor, despite my protests. Force of habit, I guess. Unfortunately, no one took me up on my offer to use a phony naval rank instead.
This evening I just took a look at my pay stub. Sure enough, my position at the university is listed as Assistant Professor.
That's it.. I'm not going to fight it anymore. If you want to call me a professor, of any sort, I won't correct you. I am no longer going to take part in academia's obsession with rank!
Many academics are absolutely obsessed with rank - Who has tenure and who doesn't have tenure... Who has achieved the status of a full P (full professor, similar to a full bird Colonel) and who is stuck at associate professor.
I taught a course last term and due to my status at my school, my rank was Lecturer, which are the NCOs of the academic world. (My best friend, incidentally, is a real-life NCO). I did not want to ruffle any feathers by being referred to having a rank I have not yet obtained, so I went out of my way to make it clear to all that I was not a professor (full or otherwise).
My teaching contract had me listed as Assistant Professor. I let HR know that I had not yet attained that rank and that I would not sign my contract until it had my correct rank. They looked at me like I was nuts, but they altered the contract and I signed it.
Course outlines were sent out to my students that had my name listed as Professor Mike Moffatt. In the first day of class I made it clear to my students that they were not to refer to me as "Professor". I said if they wanted to give me a title I hadn't earned, I'd prefer Admiral. A number of students still called me Professor, despite my protests. Force of habit, I guess. Unfortunately, no one took me up on my offer to use a phony naval rank instead.
This evening I just took a look at my pay stub. Sure enough, my position at the university is listed as Assistant Professor.
That's it.. I'm not going to fight it anymore. If you want to call me a professor, of any sort, I won't correct you. I am no longer going to take part in academia's obsession with rank!
Comments
They should call you “Doctor”.
TomAto, TamOto.
Mike, Seeing as I have had less schooling in econ as you and I only teach once a week, my title is “associate faculty” and yet my students still call me professor (I don’t prefer that), AND more interestingly, Mankiw’s macro text book that I used this semester says, “For Professor Brazelton, compliments of N. Gregory Mankiw” on the cover! If Mankiw thinks I’m a professor, well, he’s a smarter guy than me….
But, much like Obama might claim, to me, anyone that teaches at the college level is some type of professor - they are professing a knowlege at the highest academic level. There can be degrees of professorship, and regardless of whether or not you agree with the semantics, I’m sure you are appreciated as a solid teacher.
A former colleague of mine used to respond to people who called him ‘Professor’: “I object to the honorific without the appropriate emoluments” — which typically left them totally flummoxed.
There’s an obvious reason: it looks better for the school if the fact that you don’t have a Ph.D is not well-known.